THE MUSICAL FUTURIST ARNOLD SCHÖNBERG present style in drama is to be attributed. "Such success as this play had throws a shadow for several years over the theater. Managers with their genius for imitation will continue to search for one of the same kind and just as good. Playwrights, knowing that there is certain to be a demand for such works, set out to supply it. "Some more or less original talent selects for his work some new characters and new scenes. The public happens to like them. The play enjoys a long period of popularity and there are rewards for the manager and the author. Every other manager wants a play like this and every other playwright sets out to furnish one; and a mode in the theater is created." The season's most interesting play, so far, is "On Trial," a melodrama by a hitherto unknown author, Elmer L. Reizenstein. Mr. Reizenstein surprises even the jaded critic of the New York Evening Post by his startling application of the moving-picture method to the regular drama. The boldness and thoroness with which the idea was carried out on the stage of living actors, the manner in which the mechanical difficulties are faced and solved, and, the dramatic traditions of time and sequence defied and disregarded, brings success to this stunning experiment. "The rising of the first curtain and the falling of the last found that stage admirably set as a courtroom, with judge, jury, counsel, prisoner. The time of the piece was measured exactly by the length of the trial. Mr. Reizenstein's movingpicture drama trick is this: As each witness begins to testify, courtroom, judge and jury fade away, and the scene the witness is telling about takes its place before the eyes of the onlookers. The first time it happens, it is disconcerting to the point of exasperation. You say to yourself: "This will not do.' The second time it happens you are less exasperated, not so sure it, will not do; the third time, no doubt remains. It will do. It is working. The story is being told powerfully and stirringly, and the leaps back into the past which bring the murdered man to life, so far from impairing the realism of the I TURNING DRAMATIC ART TOPSY-TURVY Mr. Reizenstein's "On Trial" reverses the natural course of the drama, but his bold experiment has made a hit in New York. 249 parison with Mr. Reizenstein's piece. The play, as the Brooklyn Eagle observes, may be compared with any number of similar plays produced "before the war" which exploit the cleverness of a "master crook" who victimizes all the law-abiding folk in the play for two or three acts, only to be brought up short and unmasked to provide a "punch" for the last act. "This particular crook is a forger, working in league with a fake employment agency. He 'puts over' several big jobs; hounds an innocent girl to the house of the lawyer who is close on his trail; murders the lawyer, forges the will of the dead man; fixes the murder and the forgeries on the lawyer's son, with whom the girl is in love, and finally, in a really effective scene in the last act, is trapped by the girl, who clears up everything with the greatest ease. "The chief fault of the play lies in the fact that it takes the better part of two acts to get started. This, coupled with the unnatural dialog and forced situations, made it tiresome waiting for the overwhelming scene in the last act, which alone justifies the play." "Under Cover," a play that had a long run in Boston, is pronounced by some as even better than "Within the Law." It is (we quote the New York trial scene, serve actually to increase it. in shifting back and forth and seems to enjoy the exercise." An experienced playwright, remarks Rennold Wolf, in the Morning Telegraph, scarcely could have written the thing, because every step of the way he must have remembered the hard and fast rules which have governed dramatists these hundreds of years. To fashion such a melodrama required either the daring or the ignorance of the novice, and because Mr. Reizenstein is that, he has to his credit a sensational play which is certain to be notable in its pecuniary achievement, and which may exert a lasting influence upon play building of the future. "What Happened at 22," by Paul Wilstach, suffered considerably by com so constructed that its most vigorous thrust comes in the form of a surprise which is withheld until the last act is well under way. Its full force is felt at the moment when only too often some members of the audience begin to fumble for their wraps. The author, like Mr. Reizenstein, so far unknown to fame, has wisely selected a story which, according to the New York Tribune, never fails in the theater. Here, too, we have the shift in time which Mr. Reizenstein uses so effectively. Four farces, "Twin Beds," "The High Cost of Loving," "The Third Party," and "It Pays to Advertise," likewise scored a success in these troublous hours. They are funny without being salacious. ARNOLD SCHÖNBERG BREAKS NEW GROUND WITH N music, as in life, the Progressive of to-day is the Stand-patter of to-morrow. The men who hailed Beethoven balked at Wagner. The generation that embraced Wagner struggled painfully against Strauss. But even Strauss is already of to-morrow. The mad Austrian composer, Arnold Schönberg, out-distances his musical eccentricities, and the men who yesterday were uneasy over Strauss and Debussy, to-day are openly and vehemently hostile to the "irrubrical" newcomer. However responsive, however flexible, however hospitable we may be, remarks Lawrence Gilman in HIS FUTURIST MUSIC the North American Review, there is bound to come an hour when some new voice will speak out of the art that is contemporary with us in a tongue that is alien and repugnant; and we shall find ourselves exclaiming against it as passionately as did our grandfathers against the iconoclast who is to us a classic. Schönberg's enemies say that he is lifting the art of music from its ancient foundations. His disciples affirm that he has discovered a new land of sound, Schönberg's madness is confined to his music; in life he is an industrious, sober Viennese just past middle age. The recent performance by the Flonzaley Quartet of Schönberg's string quartet in D-minor, opus 7, in New York, verifies the prevailing impression of Schönberg as a musical idol-breaker. Yet this quartet, Mr. Gilman informs us, is by no means typical of Schönberg's present phase-the third "period" of his creative activity. In his present work all precedents are abolished, we enter a terra incognita, to all appearances an utterly barren, desolate, unfriendly land-the musical Antarctic. "As to the D-minor quartet-the first characteristic example of Schönberg's writing that has been heard in New MUCK MAY HAVE TO BEAR ARMS FOR THE KAISER In that case the Boston Symphony will be without leader. York-there is this to be said at the start: parts of it, as the adagio and the final pages, are beautiful with a beauty that is as an open book-a beauty that no sensitive hearer will fail to perceive; a beauty that is grave and exquisite, that enlarges the spirit and lingers in the heart. These pages we can all gladly and uncompromizingly acclaim, as the perplexed and angry public of Wagner's lifetime used to T except and accept, with a relief that is now comically pathetic, the bridal music in 'Lohengrin,' the Spring Song in 'Walküre.' The essential, the problematical, Schönberg is in the first section of this quartet. It is while listening to these initial pages that even the most imperturbable of modernists receives a shock. "It is not easy to describe the peculiarity of these passages to those who do not understand the special terminology of music. And as very few cultivated men or women who are not musicians ever take the trouble to approach music on its intellectual side, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss in the matter, since we are disinclined to turn these remarks into an elementary treatise on the art of composition. Let it suffice to say that with Schönberg the art of polyphonic writing-which, traditionally, means the art of combining a number of different melodies so that they will form a coherent and euphonious wholeis transformed into something the like of which was never heard on sea or land. Richard Strauss, who in his operas and tone-poems often makes the various in-. struments of his orchestra sing many different melodies at once, has achieved combinations of extreme audacity. But even Strauss has some concern for the resultant effect of his part-writing, which is always interesting, often thrilling, and sometimes ravishingly beautiful. Schönberg has apHis ideal, it parently no such concern. has been said for him, is 'absolute independence of part-writing'; and this he has assuredly achieved. The different melodic voices in his instrumental, choir proceed upon their several ways with a nonchalant indifference to the resultant effect that is both staggering and amusing in its cool effrontery. The sounds that issue from ALLEGIANCE TO FRANCIS Slezak, being a Bohemian, may even now be defending his country against the Russian invader. the four viols in the opening pages of this quartet are without precedent or parallel in music." In the compositions of Schönberg's third phase the grotesque. homeliness, the apparent harmonic insanity, which characterize the opening pages of the quartet, are even more pronounced, and here they seem to be deliberately contrived. OPERATIC SONG-BIRDS AND HE war in Europe threatens to play havoc with the operatic season in New York, Chicago and Boston. The artists and the chorus of the Metropolitan are marooned in various European cities and most of the members of the Chicago and Boston companies, according to the New York. Review, are in a like predicament. Nearly all the chorus men are reservists in the armies at war and have probably joined the colors. Several of the German principals, including Rudolph Berger, the Wagnerian tenor, are officers of the Kaiser's army. Unless counsels of peace prevail it may be necessary to postpone or curtail materially the Metropolitan season, in spite of the reassuring statements issued by Otto H. Kahn. In the event that the three big opera organizations, the Metropolitan, and the Chicago and Boston companies lose many of their artists because of the war, a plan has been suggested to amalgamate all three into one company which can give short opera sea sons in the three cities in question. The Century Company, the writer goes on to say, will be little affected by the war, only about six of its members being at present in Europe, because most of its singers are American citizens. But the forces of the other songbirds will be decimated, indeed. "Giulio Gatti-Casazza and his secretary, W. G. Thompkins, William G. Guard, the press representative of the Metropolitan, and Mrs. Guard are among those now the general manager of the Chicago combottled up in Paris. Ceofante Campanini, pany, is also marooned in the French capital. Henry Russell, of the Boston Opera Company, is in Italy, where Caruso and Toscanini are sojourning. Scotti escaped from Paris to London. Alfred Hertz, the German conductor of the Metropolitan, and his bride are in Munich, and Geraldine Farrar is in Switzerland. Nothing has been heard from any of them since the outbreak of war. Caruso and Toscanini and Polasco are on the reserve list of the Italian Army, in which Caruso served as a private soldier originally, before he took up an operatic career. Scotti "Andreas Dippel, who has made extensive plans for a season of opera comique here next season, is in Austria, and unable to leave there. Nothing has been heard from him. Mr. Dippel is a naturalized American citizen, and not subject to military service in Germany. He was an officer in the Kaiser's forces before he married the singer. Lucrezia Bori is in Switzerland, Marie Mattfield in Germany, Mary Garden in Paris, Louise Edvina in London, Margarete Ober in Berlin. Anna Case, who was making her first visit to Europe, is believed to be in Switzerland. "Kitty Cheatham has reached London after trying ordeals. She was in Berlin at the outbreak of the war and on her flight to England was obliged to go for thirty hours without food." The war, naturally, will spare women singers, but they alone cannot make OWEN DAVIS WRITES A RECIPE FOR MELODRAMA as warriors are Carl Burrian, Heinrich Hensel and Leo Slezak. It was the opinion in some quarters that the tall Austrian tenor, because of his personal friendship and influence with the Austrian Emperor, might secure exemption from military duty. "Because of his lameness it is unlikely that Alfred Hertz, the Wagnerian conductor, can be impressed into service. Richard Hageman and Hans Morgenstern may, however, be called. Of the French artists Dinh Gilly, Leon Rothier, Paolo Ananian, and of the Russians, Carl Jorn and Adamo Didur are eligible. Among other notable French and Russian artists to be affected are Lucien Muratore, Vanni Marcoux, Charles Dalmores, Theodor Chaliapine. Because of his age it is improbable that Maurice Renaud will have to fight. Italian singers not members of the Metropolitan who may become embroiled are Titta Ruffo, Alessandro Bonci and Mario Sammarco." Concern is felt over Josef Stransky, the conductor of the Philharmonic, and Carl Muck, of the Boston Symphony. Stransky owes allegiance to Francis A TENOR WHOM THE BUGLE DOES NOT Joseph. Muck, whatever gods he may CALL Carl Jorn, being an American citizen, need not don the helmet for the white band of Lohengrin. grand opera, even if they should be able and willing to leave their native homes in this crisis. Many of the German and French male singers are even now in the field. "Among the Germans and Austrians who may be involved are Rudolph Berger, Otto Goritz, Carl Braun, Herman Weil. Operatic figures well known to New Yorkers, tho no longer members of the Metropolitan, who are likely to be active ご I follow in music, looks upon William II. as the supreme lord of war. We are apt to forget, as the Tribune points out, when we listen to the warblings of the "divine Caruso" or his fellows, that this embodiment of a voice is, in another capacity, merely an Italian subject with brains enough to obey orders, shoulders strong enough for the musket and the blanket roll, and legs sufficiently stout to propel the ensemble. If, at least, Italy preserves her neutrality the musical season will be saved. If she joins in the fight, and at this 251 OWEN DAVIS' RECIPE FOR THE MANUFACTURE Na confession written for the American Magazine, called "Why I Quit Writing Melodrama," Owen Davis admits that under any other name, melodrama will always continue to interest a large portion of the American public. Himself the author of "Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model" and no less than one hundred and fifty similar melodramas, he had firmly resolved to direct his talents toward more dignified fields, when he was tempted by the enemy. "The moving-picture people offered me such a figure for a collection of short stories that I had to grab it-which shows the futility of attempting to teach an old dog new tricks!" Mr. Davis does not emphasize the metamorphosis of melodrama into motion pictures, yet the recipe he gives for the manufacture of a melodrama is evidently quite as effective for a thrilling feature film as for the old type of melodrama in which Mr. Davis excelled. OF A MELODRAMA These plays, confesses the melodramatist, were written largely by rule. The formula for the sensational melodrama, certain to please the public, is about as follows, according to Owen Davis: TITLE (at least fifty per cent. of success). Leading Woman, in love with him. Soubrette, very worthy person (poor but honest) and always in love with Comedian. Heavy Man, a villain, not for any special reason, but, like "Topsy," "born bad." Heavy Woman,-here I had a wider choice, this lady being allowed to fasten her affections upon either Hero or Villain (sometimes both) but never happily. Father (or Mother), to provide senti ment. Fill in as desired with character parts. ACT I-Start the trouble. ariöze likel ACT II-Here things look bad. The lady having left home, is quite at the mercy of Villain. ACT III The lady is saved by the help of the Stage Carpenter. (The big scenic and mechanical effects were always in Act III.) ACT IV-The lovers are united and the villains are punished. The defects of the now obsolete melodrama may be incorporated in the new motion - picture films, in their overabundance of climaxes and sensation. Mr. Davis points out the faults of the old melodrama, which was "an undigested mass of unprepared situations." "Where one carefully prepared and well-developed episode would really have been of far greater dramatic value, we made a rule of dividing our plays into no less than fifteen scenes, the end of each being a moment of perilous suspense or terrifying danger." A LOVE-MAKING OF MAN IN THE LIGHT OF COURTSHIP AMONG THE LOWER ORGANISMS N IDEA, an impression or a stimulus must be conveyed by the male to the female before the relation of wooer and wooed is established between them. The active agent is the male. Hence his greater motility. These are the newer generalizations on the subject of mating and conjugation. They tend to overthrow a delusion still too widespread regarding the courtship of man. He is said to be at a disadvantage in relation to the human female as compared with the birds and the beasts because he has nothing but a beard as an instrument of charm. The fallacy here is due to a neglect of the stimulus, the impression, the idea, derivable by the female from the proximity of the male, from the fact of his approach, whether the female be highly organized, like a mammal or be little more than a protozoa. The wooing of a maid by a man and the various poses and "strange antics"quote from a paper by Sir Ray Lankester in the London Telegraph-to which lovesick men and women resort are represented by similar behavior among animals and that, too, not only among higher animals allied to man, but even among minute and obscure insects and molluscs. In fact, declares the eminent British scientist, the elementary principle of courtship-the pursuit of the female by the maleis observed among the lowest unicellular organisms, the protozoa and the protophyta, and it holds among plants as well as among animals. -we no more than a notification of the ar- Now, does "femaleness" as distin- "It is when we have to do with actively "But in many things he is still entirely What complicates courtship in man is his capacity not only for violence as one form of it but for the exertion of the kind of influence brought to bear by the male bird, an influence to which Darwin gives the name of charm. It is obvious that man is exerting his power of stimulating, of impressing, of conveying a notion, an idea. The capacity of the female to be acted upon in this way is termed her receptivity. This receptivity is something more than perception of the fact that a stimulus operates. For instance, it is not It is pointed out by Professor Pycraft the beard of the male that is impor- in his recent work on the courtship tant to the female. The beard simply of animals that the tremendous power proclaims the presence of the male in of "mate hunger" has been overlooked the field of consciousness, evokes a by a strange confusion of cause and series of appropriate ideas. Similarly effect. Almost universally its sequel, the plumage of the male bird may be the production of offspring, has been regarded as the dominant instinct in the higher animals. This view has no foundation in fact. "Desire for the sake of the pleasure which its gratification affords, and not its consequences, is the only hold on life which any race possesses. And this is true both in the case of man himself and of the beasts that perish." Sir Ray Lankester agrees with Professor Pycraft that those whose business it is for one reason or another to study these emotions know well that "mate hunger" may be as ravenous as food hunger and that, exceptions apart, it is always immensely insistent. It is idle, says this authority, to speak of equality of the sexes in this matter either in regard to animals or in the human race. Dogmatism and the frequent repetition of plat itudes will not alter what nature has ordained: "The activities and the mechanisms of living things are related to two great ends the preservation of the individual and the preservation of the race. 'Love,' or what we should call in more discriminating language, 'amorousness,' or the 'mating hunger,' is the absolute and inherent attribute of living things upon which the preservation of the race depends. The preservation of the individual is of less importance in the scheme of nature than the preservation of the race, and we find that food-hunger and the risk of dangers of all kinds to the continuance of an individual life are made of no account when satisfaction of mate-hunger and the preservation and perpetuation of the race requires the sacrifice, the shortening of the life, or the permanent distortion or selfimmolation of the individual. Eccentric behavior and strange exaggeration of form and color, as judged by the standard of preservation of the individual, are found to be explained as due to structures (nervous or other) implanted in the race by natural selection, because, and in consequence of, the fact that they tend to the satisfaction of mate-hunger, and consequently to the preservation of the race. ... "Amorousness is the underlying factor which has shaped and is sustaining human society, and is no less powerful among the lower animals." It might well be asked, indeed, whether it be not scientific in the finest and highest sense to live for love. Naturally, the definition of the term might occasion controversy. SUBTLETY OF THE WAVE IN THE ETHER THE ANALOGY BETWEEN WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AND WAVES FROM BRAIN TO BRAIN W HEN Marconi first introduced his system of wireless telegraphy, some people, to whom a British scientist refers as "strangely ill informed," were allowed to write in the newspapers with the purpose of announcing to "the ever patient wonder-swallowing members of the public" that this new marvel rendered it impossible to deny any longer that even more marvelous communication of mind with mind which had lately been called "telepathy." Just in the same way, it was said, as the electric waves pass from one Marconi station to another without wire or conduit, so do brain waves pass from one brain to another over thousands of miles. Even the friend of Tyndall and of Huxley, the capable James Knowles, made on this subject one of his rare communications in The Nineteenth Century. This was intended to set forth what he considered the greatly increased probability of the truth of the suppositions of those who believe in the transmission of information from brain to brain by brain waves, now that Marconi was daily transmitting such information by electric He and others who reasoned in the same way omitted to give any attention to the fact, insists a high authority whose observations have been given much space in the English press, that all that wireless telegraphy does actually produce at a distance from the operator is a series of very delicate electrical disturbances and that these would not be noticeable at all by a human being unless he had availed himself of a detector-coherer or other and converted the slight electrical disturbance into a sound or minute movement: waves. "We do not know of the existence of 'brain-waves,' nor do the persons who talk of them tell us in what material these waves are supposed to occur. But if we let it be assumed that these hypothetical brain-waves exist, how are we to suppose they are 'received' by a second brain? We do not know of any apparatus in connection with the human brain which can reasonably be supposed to act as a 'detector' and convert these supposed brain-waves into a sensible form, as is necessary in the operation of wireless telegraphy. Moreover, supposing we admit that there is some undiscovered detector apparatus, like the Marconi coherer, acting so as to receive the undiscovered but assumed brain-waves discharged intermittently by a distant brain, what agreement has been made between the owner of one brain and the owner of another corresponding to the Morse alphabet? Without some such code the brain-waves could convey no information; and yet none of those who think they have received 'telepathic' communications profess to have any knowledge of a code or to be able to interpret intermittent signaling by brain-waves. It is worth while taking note of this because a great number of semi-intelligent people urable sense of mystery by the imperfect who are moved to wonder and a pleasreports of scientific and medical discoveries now frequent in the daily press were led by the supposition that 'telepathy' was analogous to 'wireless telegraphy' into a firm belief in the existence of the former, and there they have remained ever since, with a comfortable assurance that their belief has somehow or another a sort of a scientific basis. "It is, however, very desirable to induce our fellow-citizens to think methodically, to give due value to evidence of fact and to distinguish it from fancy, opinion, and hope. In fact, to distinguish 'that which is,' and can be shown to be,' from that which 'might be' or 'may be,' and can be fondly imagined and eloquently talked about, but is never demonstrated, produced, or shown to be. It appears now that tho some of the believers in telepathy have entertained the notion that the sense-organs and the substance of the brain are acted on by imaginary brainwaves emanating from distant brains, yet that the late Mr. F. Myers and other leading believers in 'telepathy' disavow altogether any explanation of 'telepathy' as arising from the action of waves or impulses." There does not seem to be much for a reasonable man to say when such assumptions are made, according to Sir Ray Lankester, excepting that they are altogether unwarranted assumptions. The real point to which attention should be directed is this: Are the statements as to facts which are said to necessitate the supposition that one human mind can communicate with another without making use of the ordinary channels of the senses sufficiently well supported to warrant their acceptance? They are of two distinct groups. They are given in records of experiments on persons in which the aim was to transfer selected images from an initiating to a receiving mind by mere thought and without any appeal to the sense organs. The reality of the transfer is estimated by com paring the number of identities obtained in the thought of the initiator and the guess of the receiver with those which would be obtained by mere coincidence in a long series of trials. It is a curious and significant fact that in a long series of experiments in this thought transference it was found that when the persons acting as initiator and receiver respectively were in separate rooms, the guess of the receiver as to what had been thought of-usually a number or a shape-by the initiator was not more frequently correct than 253 was to be expected by unbiased coincidence. But when the receiver and the initiator were in the same room, and therefore capable of communicating through the senses, whether consciously or unconsciously, ninety successes were recorded in 617 trials, whereas if due to unbiased coincidence there should have been only eight. In no series of any length, according to Mr. N. W. Thomas, who studied the matter at first hand, were the successes so far above chance as to give substantial support to a belief in telepathy: "The stories of apparitions of distant persons to their friends, either at some very critical moment or (in by far the largest number of cases) at or soon after death, are credible in so far as they such hallucinations. record the occurrence now and then of The chance that such an hallucination will occur to A.'s friend or relative within twenty-four hours of A.'s death is one in 19,000 (the death-rate being just over 19 in the 1,000 per annum), whilst it is 1-365th of that, or 1-19th in the 1,000 for a single day of twenty-four hours. A collection was made by a committee, over which Professor Henry Sidgwick presided, of 1,300 cases of such apparitions related by the persons who had experienced them. Thirty of these cases were death coincidences-that is to say, the person who 'appeared' died within twenty-four hours. This rate is not one, but 440, in 19,000, so that the committee inferred that some undetected agency was at work causing this increase of coincidence of the apparition and death from one in 19,000 to one in 43. That is a true and just statement of the case. "But I do not agree with Professor McDougall that 'telepathy,' not otherwise known to exist, should be here invoked, unknown and untested as it is, in order to generate 'hallucinatory perceptions'; nor need we jump to the conclusions in favor of altogether unproven spiritual emanations and influences favored by other critics of the committee's report. To me by far the most probable explanation of the increase in coincidence of death and hallucination, in the recorded cases as compared with what one would expect from the death-rate, is not to be sought in any occult force or ghostly a well-established possibilities, but in and recognized, tho regrettable, reality which I will call 'human frailty.' This intellectual frailty consists in the inaccuracy-sometimes unintentional, but often deliberate of narrators of such stories, the inaccuracy which arises from incorrect observation both of the apparition and its date as well as incorrect record of the death of the appearing individual, oversight) of antecedent circumstances inaccuracy as to record (and consequent which made it likely that the person whose hallucinatory apparition was seen should be specially thought of or should be specially likely to die." |